"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
93
But even after the statement is safely filed away, the author knows that it can be made
public at any moment. So from then on he doesn't open his mouth, never criticizes a
thing, never makes the slightest protest. The first peep out of him and into print it goes,
sullying his good name far and wide. On the whole, it's rather a nice method. One could
imagine worse.
Yes, it's a very nice method, said Tomas, but would you mind
telling me who gave you
the idea I'd agreed to go along with it?
S. shrugged his shoulders, but the smile did not disappear from his face.
And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact:
everyone
was smiling at him,
everyone
wanted him to write the retraction; it would make
everyone
happy! The people with the
first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make
their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The
people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a
special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured
a secret love for the cowards, for without
them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no
one.
Tomas could not bear the smiles. He thought he saw them everywhere, even on the
faces of strangers in the street. He began losing sleep. Could it be? Did he really hold
those people in such high esteem? No. He had nothing good to say about them and
was angry with himself for letting their glances upset him so. It was completely illogical.
How could someone who had so little respect for people be so dependent on what they
thought of him?
Perhaps his deep-seated mistrust of people (his doubts as to their right to decide his
destiny and to judge him) had played its part in his choice of profession,
a profession
that excluded him from public display. A man who chooses to be a politician, say,
voluntarily makes the public his judge, with the naive assurance that he will gain its
favor. And if the crowd does express its disapproval, it merely goads him on to bigger
and better things, much in the way Tomas was spurred on by the difficulty of a
diagnosis.
A doctor (unlike a politician or an actor) is judged only by his patients and immediate
colleagues, that is, behind closed doors, man to man. Confronted by the looks of those
who
judge him, he can respond at once with his own look, to explain or defend himself.
Now (for the first time in his life) Tomas found himself in a situation where the looks
fixed on him were so numerous that he was unable to register them. He could answer
them neither with his own look nor with words. He was at everyone's mercy. People
talked about him inside and outside the hospital (it was a time when news about who
betrayed, who denounced, and who collaborated spread through nervous Prague with
the uncanny speed of a bush telegraph); although he knew about it, he could do
nothing to stop it. He was surprised at how unbearable he found it,
how panic-stricken it
made him feel. The interest they showed in him was as unpleasant as an elbowing
crowd or the pawings of the people who tear our clothes off in nightmares.
"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
94
He went to the chief surgeon and told him he would not write a word.
The chief surgeon shook his hand with greater energy than usual and said that he had
anticipated Tomas's decision.
Perhaps you can find a way to keep me on even without a statement, said Tomas,
trying to hint that a threat by all his colleagues to resign upon his dismissal would
suffice.
But his colleagues never dreamed of threatening to resign, and so before long (the
chief surgeon shook his hand even more energetically than the previous time—it was
black and blue for days), he was forced to leave the hospital.
First he went to work in a country clinic about fifty miles from Prague. He commuted
daily by train and came home exhausted. A year later, he managed to find a more
advantageous but much inferior position at a clinic on the outskirts of Prague. There, he
could
no longer practice surgery, and became a general practitioner. The waiting room
was jammed, and he had scarcely five minutes for each patient; he told them how much
aspirin to take, signed their sick-leave documents, and referred them to specialists. He
considered himself more civil servant than doctor.
One day, at the end of office hours, he was visited by a man of about fifty whose
portliness added to his dignity. He introduced himself as representing the Ministry of the
Interior, and invited Tomas to join him for a drink across the street.
He ordered a bottle of wine. I have to drive home, said Tomas by way of refusal. I'll lose
my license if they find I've been drinking. The man from the Ministry of the Interior
smiled. If anything happens, just show them this.
And he handed Tomas a card
engraved with his name (though clearly not his real name) and the telephone number of
the Ministry.
He then went into a long speech about how much he admired Tomas and how the
whole Ministry was distressed at the thought of so respected a surgeon dispensing
aspirin at an outlying clinic. He gave Tomas to understand that although he couldn't
come out and say it, the police did not agree with drastic tactics like removing
specialists from their posts.
Since no one had thought to praise Tomas in quite some time, he listened to the plump
official very carefully, and he was surprised by the precision and detail of the man's
knowledge of his professional career. How defenseless we are in the face of flattery!
Tomas was unable to prevent himself from taking seriously what the Ministry official
said.
But it was not out of mere vanity. More important was Tomas's lack of experience.
When you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful,
and polite, you
have a hard time reminding yourself that
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